Michael Thomas

RHCE of the Year, USA, 2008

"My RHCE helped me set up a network install system for one of the most reliable computing facilities dedicated to the CMS exeriment at CERN#39;s Large Hadron Collider."

System administrator

As systems admin for a Caltech computing farm of almost 200 servers, automation is a key part of my job. My RHCE® helped me set up a network install system based on DHCP and PXE to fully automate the installation and configuration of the slave compute nodes in our farm. Customized Kickstart files automate the setup and configuration of other development servers, many of which are now being migrated to Red Hat® Enterprise Linux® 5 Xen servers to reduce power and cooling issues that have plagued us recently. RHCE also helped me manage the support servers in our facility, which includes additional DNS, httpd, and NFS services. This enables us to maintain, with minimal effort, one of the most reliable computing facilities dedicated to the CMS experiment at CERN's Large Hadron Collider and helps pave the way for new physics!